Fukushima residents slowly returning0:59

A local who’s keen to move back and been busy renovating his abandoned house, and starts farming project hoping to change the fact that food from the Fukushima region has been shunned since the nuclear accident. Courtesy: SBS Dateline

As the clean-up and decontamination continues those who were lucky enough to escape face a harsh choice: continue living away as nuclear evacuees or return to the places they once called home.

SBS Dateline reporter Amos Roberts met families and community members who face that choice with the town of Namie set to reopen at the end of the month.

A deserted main street in Namie, Fukushima. Picture: Amos Roberts/DatelineSource:Supplied

His story, which features on SBS tonight, Coming Home to a Nuclear Wasteland, reveals the stark choice some people face in deciding whether to stay away or rebuild their old lives.

Speaking to news.com.au, Roberts said visiting the ghost towns of Fukushima was a real shock with collapsed buildings and rusted abandoned cars lining the streets.

“The motorway actually passes through the radioactive countryside and it’s bizarre to whiz past these deserted towns knowing that the air outside is poisoned,” he said.

While he has filmed old steel factories and coalmines in other countries, Roberts said being in Fukushima felt both sad and dangerous.

“Sad because there were reminders everywhere of lives that had been suddenly been interrupted — calendars still showed March, 2011, marked with appointments that were never met,” he said.

“Dangerous, because of the invisible threat from radiation.”

Roberts visited Namie, which has been decontaminated and said he felt safe there.

But there was one place he didn’t feel quite so assured.

An abandoned, derelict house, one of thousands left vacant across the Fukushima region. Picture: Amos Robert/DatelineSource:Supplied

The journalist gained access to the “red zone” close to the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant where victors must wear a protective suit and carry a Geiger counter — an instrument used for measuring radiation.

Levels were so high he couldn’t film there for longer than an hour at a time.

“When you leave, masked workers scan you and your car for radiation before giving you the all clear and bowing as you drive off,” he said.

The Japanese government has moved to assure people things are safe but genuine concerns remain about radiation exposure in towns which surround the plant.

“While some Fukushima towns have been decontaminated, they border areas that are will effectively remain no-go zones,” Roberts said.

“Severe storms or other extreme weather events including earthquakes could leave the towns vulnerable to contamination again.”

Roberts said authorities have been vigilant about measuring radiation in the affected towns and even runs programs testing children for thyroid cancer.

“They really want to show that things have gone back to normal in Fukushima, partly because they’re reopening nuclear power plants that were shut down after the accident, and partly because they’re about to showcase their country at the Tokyo Olympics,” he said.

One Namie resident Yoshiko, whose husband once worked at the power plant, told Roberts it is a contaminated town.

“We think about our children like every family with children,” she said.

“When I think about their future you wouldn’t want to go back.”

Another, Hisao Sasaki, who has lived in Namie for generations revealed he can’t imagine living anywhere else. He renovates his house and grows vegetables in preparation for his return, despite the invisible threat of radiation.

Dateline also spoke with Namie Mayor Tamotsu Baba who is among those driving the reopening town and said it was his goal to restore it to what it once was.

It will remain a challenge given half of the town’s former residents say they don’t want to return home and about a third remain undecided.

Amos Roberts has his boots screened for traces of radiation. Picture: Amos Roberts/DatelineSource:Supplied

But Roberts reveals there are even bigger concerns for people contemplating returning to ghost towns such as Namie.

“The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is only 11km way from Namie,” he said.

“No one has yet worked out how to safely remove the nuclear fuel debris that remains so the plant can be decommissioned — in fact they don’t even know precisely where it is. The levels of radiation are so mind boggling that it kills off the robots sent to measure it.”

There also remains a high level of distrust from some people who don’t believe it is as safe as they’re being told.

“When the people of Namie were evacuated, for example, they were directed to leave in the same direction that the plume of radiation was spreading, exposing themselves to danger,” Roberts said.